kmusser

Day 2 is devoted to swimming with dolphins. We booked a trip with a group of new age/Pagan freaks called Sunlight on Water (warning website has audio) which required a pre-dawn launch to drive back to Kona to meet our boat (we probably could’ve planned that better). Weather is beautiful though and we have no trouble finding our peeps and soon it’s off we go. Our guides are great and we even get a brief ceremony to start us off. It isn’t very long before we get our first whale sighting off in the distance – we continue on and before long we do indeed find dolphins. It’s amazing how many of them there are and how close we are to the shore, they have no problem swimming right by the boat. And they really do spin, it's pretty impressive. We’re outfitted with snorkeling gear and since we’re not particularly good swimmers grab pool noodles as well and into the water we go. First try I don’t do so well as I have trouble breathing – with some gel to help me get a better seal on the mask and much hand holding on the part of one of our guides I do better on the second try and do indeed see a bunch of dolphins. Probably even cooler (really I think I got just as good a view of them from on the boat) was that you could hear them squeaking away at each other. Zammis also heard the whales singing. Eventually it’s time to head back – on the way we get a great view of a whale and her baby. All in all a great outing.

Back on shore we stop in Kona at a Thai place for lunch. Take a brief driving detour to go up the mountain a little bit and take a look at a nearby cloud forest, a very surreal landscape. Also apparently home to cows. After that it's back to the Hobbit House, dinner, and deep sleep.